I disagree. Political TV time is not a fixed resource that would get divided some other way. If there were no money in televising commercials for presidential candidates, they would get replaced by car commercials and restaurant commercials and so on. There might still be a similar proportion of Obama:Romney commercials based on them politely asking station owners to help them, but the overall volume would be much much less, which would mean more people would decide based on non-TV-commercial reasons and the candidates would end up owing fewer favors.
You are right when you say that removing money doesn't make the resources to be allocated go away, but all those resources can also be allocated to nonpolitical things. If those nonpolitical things still have money but the campaigns don't, the nonpolitical things will win out and the economy will allocate campaigns proportionately fewer resources.
The fewer resources a campaign has, the greater the proportion of their opportunities to appeal to voters consist of "legitimate" ones like appearing in debates and using publicly funded airtime. These should be both fairer across all candidates, less likely to end up with candidates owing people favors, and more likely to help people make informed decisions.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 04:15 am (UTC)You are right when you say that removing money doesn't make the resources to be allocated go away, but all those resources can also be allocated to nonpolitical things. If those nonpolitical things still have money but the campaigns don't, the nonpolitical things will win out and the economy will allocate campaigns proportionately fewer resources.
The fewer resources a campaign has, the greater the proportion of their opportunities to appeal to voters consist of "legitimate" ones like appearing in debates and using publicly funded airtime. These should be both fairer across all candidates, less likely to end up with candidates owing people favors, and more likely to help people make informed decisions.